Contemporary St.

Louis Art Museum

The Contemporary St. Louis Art Museum has been designed by Allied Works Architecture and completed in September 2003. Is a noncollecting exhibition, educational and event space in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is located in a neighborhood of empty lots, burned out churches and lone townhouses that mark a lost twentieth-century urban ideal. The site is located in the Grand Center District, adjacent to the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Together, the institutions are a focal point for the arts community in St. Louis and a catalyst for the redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhood. The building is located at the intersection of North Spring Avenue and Washington Avenue, being oriented north bt its longitudinal development, but its entrance oriented east. The Contemporarys mission is not to preserve, but to provoke: presenting work from noted artists such as Maya Lin, Bruce Nauman and Cindy Sherman, as well as emerging contemporary artists.

Architects practice
Allied Works Architecture is a 40-person practice led by Brad Cloepfil from offices in Portland, Oregon and New York City. The defining project of Allied Works is the Maryhill Overlook in the Columbia River Gorge, completed in 1998, the first of a series of five installation designs in diverse landscapes across the Pacific Northwest. In recent years the practice has gone on to complete a number of critically acclaimed projects, including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; the Dutchess County Residence Guest House; the redesign of 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts and Design; Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the Dallas Arts District; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; and a new feature animation studio in Emeryville, California.

Building description
The two-story museum provides open, flexible space for exhibitions and programs while emphasizing transparency at ground level. The building is formed by two intersecting ribbons of concrete and stainless steel mesh that weave and overlap to define the principal volumes. The lower walls bound the museum and create a series of large interconnecting galleries. The walls alternately delineate the site boundaries and fold inwards, inviting the public to enter and providing views through the building from the neighboring streets. These serpentine walls touch

the sidewalk and fold inwards, inviting the public to enter and providing views completely through the building from the street intersection outside. The upper walls span above the galleries, providing spaces for administration and education. Between these walls, ceiling planes are held at varying heights to create variations in scale, proportion and enclosure, providing a diversity of day lighting conditions and curatorial opportunities. The ceilings float between these upper boundaries at varying heights, modulating the proportion and light of the galleries. The two realms of space and structure converge and diverge, spinning the perception of enclosure and transparency in multiple directions. The upper order of panels, clad in glistening stainless-steel metal mesh, creates a powerful architectural definition of volume .Cloepfil changed ceiling heights between the panels, slotting the gaps with clerestories. The floor areas also shift gently through ramps and shallow stairs, thereby defining three large exhibition areas primarily by differences in height (13, 20, and 26 feet) and quality of light. With floor space freed of columns, the arrangement permits curators to further subdivide at will. More concrete panels unfurl along the curving sidewalk front and project beyond the buildings volumein a long, daring cantileverto frame a dramatic rectangle of sky over the entrance. The sandblasted surface and more sunlight-refracting mesh present a tough exterior, but one which subtly contrasts with the crisp severity of Andos building next door. This Minimalist alternation of materials, pattern, and texture represents a reconciliation of opposite impulses. He needed a largely closed exterior to provide ample art-hanging space. Key words: Education center, multi-purpose presentation space, reconfigurable galleries,
architectural concrete, flexible space

References: http://www.alliedworks.com
http://www.archdaily.com